Curators Statement

Generative music software installation (2015)

Musebots are pieces of software that autonomously create music, collaboratively with other musebots. The goal of this project is to establish a creative platform for experimenting with musical autonomy, open to people developing cuttingedge music AI, or simply exploring the creative potential of generative processes in music. Not simply a robot jam, but individual virtual instrumentalists coming together, like a band, to autonomously create (in this case) downtempo EDM. For this Canadian premiere of the MuseBot ensemble, we have contributions from Europe, Australia, and North America. Curated by Arne Eigenfeldt & Oliver Bown.

• Arne Eigenfeldt, Canada, is a composer of live electroacoustic music, and a researcher into intelligent generative music systems. His music has been performed around the world,  and  his collaborations range from Persian Tar masters to contemporary dance companies to  musical robots. He has presented his research at conferences and festivals such as the  International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), Sound and Music Computing (SMC), the International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC), the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), Creativity and Cognition, EvoMusArt, Generative Art, and New  Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). He is a professor of music and technology at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, and is the co-director of the Metacreation Lab.
• Oliver Bown, Senior Lecturer, UNSW Faculty of Art & Design, Interactive Media Lab, Sydney, Australia. I am a researcher and maker working with creative technologies. I come from a highly diverse academic background spanning social anthropology, evolutionary and adaptive systems, music informatics and interaction design, with a parallel career in electronic music and digital art spanning over 15 years. I am interested in how artists, designers and musicians can use advanced computing technologies to produce complex creative works. My current active research areas include media multiplicites, musical metacreation, the theories and methodologies of computational creativity, new interfaces for musical expression, and multi-agent models of social creativity. Following a bachelors in mathematics and social anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a masters in evolutionary and adaptive systems at the University of Sussex, I undertook a PhD looking at simulation models of the evolution of human musical behaviour at the Intelligent Sound and Music Systems group, Goldsmiths College, London, under the supervision of Professor Geraint Wiggins. In 2008 I moved to Melbourne, Australia, to work as postdoctoral research assistant with Jon McCormack at Monash University, working on an ARC Discovery Project that looked at ecosystemic approaches to digital creativity. Then in 2011 I took a lectureship at the Design Lab at the University of Sydney, where I am currently on a postdoctoral fellowship. During this time I have played in a number of improvied music ensembles, most notably my electronic music duo Icarus (with Sam Britton), the Not Applicable Artists Collective (with Sam Britton, Tom Arthurs, Lothar Olhmeier, Maurizio Ravalico, Britt Hatzius, Martin Hampton, Rudi Fischerlehner and Oliver Dukert), and Tangents (with Peter Hollo, Adrian Lim-Klumpes, Shoeb Ahmad and Evan Dorrian). I am also a collaborating member of the digital interactive art group Squidsoup, and have collaborated with many artsits, musicians and designers on digital interactive artworks. I am a founding member of the Musical Metacreation Research Network, a member of the steering committee for the International Conference on Computational Creativity, and a creative advisor to the University of Sydney Vivid Festival. I have performed, composed and created interactive works in a number of countries, contexts and collaborations, such as… Sonic Acts Festival Amsterdam, Vivid Sydney, AudioVisiva Milan, Bimhuis Amsterdam, Scala London, Oslo Lux, Kinetica Art Fair, Powerhouse Sydney, ISEA, Four Tet (remix), Murcof (remix), The Leaf Label, Output Recordings, Cafe Oto, Adem Ilhan (duo), Futuresonic, Dysfunktional Beats, The NOW Now, Eclectic Method feat. Chuck D (remix), ABC New Music Up Late, ABC Sound Quality, Codame Festival San Francisco, ABC Catalyst, Science Museum London, FBi Ears Have Ears, Weirdcore, Shepherds Bush Empire London, The Monastery of Sound, JazzHouse Copenhagen, Norburg Festival Sweden, Rump Recordings, Jazzjuice Festival Aarhus, ISEA, HellosQuare, Sage Gateshead, North Sea Jazz Festival, King’s Place London, Brussels Planetarium, The Wire Magazine, BBC Mixing It, BBC Late Junction, Shunt London, Cube Cinema Bristol, Temporary Residence, Siouxie Sioux (remix), Sonic Arts Network Expo, Ars Electronica, Transmediale Festival, Cave12 Geneva, Caribou (remix), Aphex Twin (software development), Lux Cinema London, PRS Foundation for New Music, STEIM Amsterdam, Sage Gateshead, xCoAx, Dispatch Festival Belgrade, Seymour Centre, Australia Council, British Council.

Text with images (PDF) p. 198